Senators on both sides of the aisle Sunday agreed the GOP health care replacement bill needs much more treatment.
Senators on both sides of the aisle Sunday agreed that the GOP health care replacement bill needs much more treatment.
In a rare show of bipartisan unity on health care, several Democrat and Republican senators members said in a series of TV interviews that the Senate healthcare bill needs work — and doesn’ t deserve a vote anytime soon.
Even President Trump joined the pile-on by confirming recent reports that he slammed the plan as “mean.”
The Senate is reckoning with the latest version of the Obamacare replacement plan, and the GOP leadership hoped to get a vote on it this week before Congress begins a recess July 4.
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But politicians from both parties said Sunday that now is no time to vote.
“There’s no way on God’s earth that this bill should be passed this week, ” Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) , who ran for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination, said on NBC News’ “Meet the Press.”
“People of Wisconsin don’t know what’s in it, people of Vermont don’t know what’s in it. We need a serious discussion and I’m quite confident that every member of the Democratic caucus would want to hold that discussion, ” Sanders said.
The opposition from Republicans was even more significant, since the defections of only a few GOP senators would be enough to sink the bill.
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Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson, who has said he will not stand by the bill as it is written, said the vote should be delayed.
“There’s no way we should be voting on this next week. No way, ” he said on “Meet the Press.”
“Let’s not rush this process. Let’s have the integrity to show the American people what it is, show them the truth.”
Maine Sen. Susan Collins, another GOP critic of the bill, said it was “hard” for her to see a vote coming before the break.
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“I have very serious concerns about the bill, ” she said on ABC News’ “This Week, ” highlighting how it will cut more than $800 billion from Medicaid.
In a “Fox & Friends” interview aired Sunday, Trump verified reports from last week that he told lawmakers he thought the bill was “mean, ” despite rallying behind the House version of it. He also claimed former President Barack Obama only called it “mean” after he did.
“He used my term, ‘mean,’ ” Trump said about Obama.
“That was my term because I want to see, and I speak from the heart – that’s what I want to see. I want to see a bill with heart.”
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Senate Republicans finally released the draft bill last week after tinkering with it behind closed doors for weeks without Democrat collaboration.
Similar to the House bill, the new text calls for drastic slashing of Medicaid while cutting taxes that wealthy Americans and corporations paid to support Obamacare. The Congressional Budget Office estimated that the House bill, which passed in May by a narrow margin, will cut coverage for 23 million Americans. The office has yet to release an estimate for the Senate bill.
The White House has so far simply denied that some of the bill’s most severe changes will be happening.
In Sunday TV interviews, White House counselor Kellyanne Conway and Health Secretary Tom Price falsely stated that the bill does not mandate deep cuts to Medicaid. They also argued that it will decrease premiums, despite several congressional critics saying last week it will in fact increase them.
